Paul Murphy MP, last week, called Welsh teachers out on their lack of ambition in getting students from state schools into Oxbridge. His statements only serve to put the proverbial icing on the cake in a week when Michael Gove has essentially called teachers lazy. I wonder if...

It was with a considerably arched brow that I read recently about how The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) and the Social Care Institute for Excellence (SCIE) have issued guidelines to parents on managing problematic behaviours in their children. As a teacher, I have long been an...

I keep going on about it and I probably will, simply because it makes good sense. Empathy, or the lack thereof, causes so many of the daily frustrations in teaching and prevents so much of the learning that could take place in the classroom, that it seems foolhardy to ignore...

It's not often that I turn to a Catholic prayer to begin anything, let alone a blog post. I count myself, most days, as agnostic. My first encounter with the Prayer of St Francis came, embarrassingly, in an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and even then, it was a...

When you look at data, the figures are large, but they turn into rows of numbers on a website. Wasn't it wonderful news that the number of NEETs (Not in Education, Employment or Training) in England dropped in 2011? That must mean that we have some sort of brilliant system...

This week, for the first time since school started three weeks ago, I left work for an appointment at 4pm. On my way past the school gym, I could see members of staff running the table tennis club. I said goodnight to members of staff on their way to epilepsy...

You lucky, lucky people. If you have been appointed as a Head of Department, you will of course be looking forward to starting your journey towards changing the lives of myriad young people through your chosen subject. And what a journey that is going to be! I'm not even being...

Heads of English across the country must be feeling more than a little hard done by this evening. I certainly feel it and what's worse, nothing I say to my students makes the fact that they didn't achieve the grade they were on track to achieve any better. After all,...

This time last year, I was in my flat in Tottenham, wondering whether my street would become the next casualty of the riots that engulfed my local high street. I wrote about the smell of burning and the sense of shock, feeling that the world had gone mad. In the...

I can just see it now. Imagine in a few months time, an opening evening for prospective parents at a fairly established academy. Concerned parent approaches teacher, standing cheerfully in a beautifully designed classroom. "I do want to send my child here," Parent says, fidgeting slightly. "And this is a...

Having just been at the national opening ceremony of the Teach First Summer Institute 2012, I have been considering the fate of all 997 of those smiling, fresh-faced new teachers. They are about to embark on one of the hardest journeys a young professional can experience; they are about to...

Watching a close friend's 18-month-old son play with his mother's iPad and seeing even at that age, he knew what to do with the device made me realise that his childhood, teenage years and adulthood will be very different from mine.

Instead of feeling nostalgia for the days when...

Nothing beats the stress and tension of exam season if you work in a secondary school. For students, exam season is a wake-up call, one of the first moments that they realise there are some situations where only their own brain and effort will get them through. For teachers, exam...

If there's one thing English teachers should read before they go back to work on Monday, it is the Ofsted document entitled 'Moving English Forward'. It is always interesting to hear what Ofsted inspectors think of any kind of lesson, but nothing really prepared me for the full,...

I have to admit ambivalence about yesterday's NUT strike in London. I went to work, not because I disagree with the concept of fighting for my pension, but for the rather more prosaic reason that I belong to another union, who did not choose to strike this time.

Where...

What do misbehaving students, a bus crash in Coventry, the Tottenham riots and our current government have in common?

The concept of empathy is one I have long been interested in. Differences between students can often be attributed to varying levels of empathy - persistent low level misbehaviour speaks volumes...

Is 2012 the year that racism makes its name? It's hard to ignore the fact that sports headlines have been less focused on, well, actual sport than the prejudicial antics of a few well known players. Whatever our opinions of John Terry and Luis Suarez, it seems that racism is...

There is always that child you know you should never ring home for, who may be disrupting a class, but whose parents are suspected to be a little too free with their fists. That child who is known to Social Services, who may not have broken bones, but cries hysterically...

Me: What are you doing with your half day off?
Student: My friends want to go to Westfield but...
Me: But what?
Student: I keep saying we should get the train there.
Me: So? What's the problem?
Student: One of my friends says we...

In times of strife, I usually turn to Confucius and a large tub of ice-cream. As always, Confucius' words of wisdom allow me to take a moment to reflect on the aspect of my professional life that has started to become irksome. Lately - and this may indeed be a...